Travelers are increasingly relying on the Internet to book travel reservations. For air travel, as an example, travelers may access airline web sites and/or third party travel web sites to search for different travel recommendations meeting a desired search criterion, such as a particular departure city or airport, destination city or airport, departure time and date, return time and date, and price. Other options, such as number of connections, travel class, etc. may also be specified to enable a traveler to select a particular travel recommendation best meeting the traveler's needs.
Online booking is typically a very individualized process, where a single individual, such as a traveler or a travel agent representing the traveler, inputs the desired search criterion into a web site, browses the search results, selects a desired travel recommendation, and completes the reservation by inputting personal information about the traveler as well as appropriate payment information. Often this is performed during an online “session” between the individual and the web site, and the web site maintains a session identifier that is provided to the individual's computer so that whenever the individual's computer sends a message to the web site, the web site can associate the message with that individual's session.
Where multiple travelers are planning on traveling together, multiple reservations may be booked together; however, a single traveler typically handles the booking process, including inputting the personal information about each traveler and securing a single payment to cover all of the reservations. For larger groups of travelers, such as 10 or more travelers, a completely different business process is typically used, often using a separate group sales system, to accommodate the particular needs of larger groups of travelers.
For smaller groups of travelers (e.g., groups smaller than 10 travelers), however, individual bookings may be difficult to coordinate. For example, if two couples are planning a trip to a vacation destination, the couples may tentatively agree in person, over the phone, or via text or email as to a particular destination, and on rough dates and times. One traveler from that group may then access one or more travel-related web sites to locate one or more potential travel recommendations, and then send those travel recommendations to the other travelers to get their feedback as to preferred dates, times and costs, often either via phone call, email, text, or some other form of electronic communication. Unless all travelers agree on the same travel recommendation, additional searching and distribution of additional travel recommendations to the other travelers may be required, leading to further delays.
Then, when all travelers finally assent to the same travel recommendation, a reservation must be booked for all travelers. In some instances, the traveler that coordinated the search may complete the reservation for all of the travelers, entering personal information for each traveler and paying for all of the reservations in a single credit card transaction. At some later point, the other travelers may repay that traveler for their own reservations, albeit with the possible stress on the relationships that sometimes occurs when friends owe money to one another. In addition, the traveler that coordinated the search may not have the necessary personal information for all of the travelers in the group, or some travelers may be not willing to provide that information.
As such, in some instances, the travelers in a group may agree to individually complete their respective reservations. To do so, however, each traveler is typically required to initiate a new online session with the web site, re-enter the original search to locate the previously agreed-upon travel recommendation, and complete the reservation for that traveler (and possibly other related travelers such as spouses or other family members). When different travelers later initiate new online sessions, however, a risk exists that the availability and/or price of an agreed-upon travel recommendation may change before all travelers can complete their respective reservations, possibly leading to some travelers being forced to pay higher fees or choose alternative arrangements.
Consequently, a significant need continues to exist in the art for an improved manner of coordinating the selection and booking of travel reservations for groups of travelers.